I Origins

The use of retina scanning and iris recognition in determining identity becomes the launching off point for "I Origins," a drama about science, faith and eternity. The title is a slightly awkward pun, but it accurately describes the movie's areas of investigation - not just the origins of the eye, but of the "I," of consciousness.

Michael Pitt plays a young scientist whose big ambition is to disprove the existence of God by documenting the precise process by which the human eye evolved - the chain of development in simple organism through primates. Meanwhile, in his private life, he enjoys taking pictures of people's eyeballs. In one likable, loony sequence, he meets a masked woman at a costume party, photographs her eyes and later is able to track her down when he spots those same eyes staring out from a billboard.

"I Origins" is at its best when it's a personal story about relationships, and it has a strong first hour. Ian (Pitt) gets romantically involved with Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), his temperamental and philosophical opposite. She is childish, impulsive and spiritual, and he is sober, methodical and empirical. Theirs is the kind of chemistry that makes either for a brief, glorious passion or a marriage from the depths of hell. Sofi is contrasted with Brit Marling as Karen, Ian's lab partner, who is brilliant and sane and offers him the prospect of a happy, productive life.

The actors are appealing, and they benefit from writer-director Mike Cahill's script, which takes care to individualize them. Berges-Frisbey is fascinating in her moodiness and impulsiveness, but Cahill and Marling make Karen just as interesting, not just as a sounding board for the hero's ideas and inspirations, but as an energetic, instigating presence in her own right.

Where the film derails - no, it doesn't quite derail; rather, it goes intentionally and methodically off the tracks - is when it stops being about personalities and starts being about ideas. Making a drama out of ideas is tough enough, and these ideas aren't all that compelling. Take the first big idea, the movie's foundational concept. How would an evolutionary mapping of the eye's development disprove God's existence? It might disprove the Genesis story, but that's all. That means there really are fewer consequences to the research than the filmmaker imagines. The scientist's hypothesis, even if proved, wouldn't change much of anything.

"I Origins" slows down the longer it goes on, and the last half hour drifts into vagueness. The climax is dramatically inert and depends on the soundtrack to convince us that it's actually happening. Even worse, in the movie's own terms, it's scientifically inconclusive. Still, getting there is mostly pleasant.